Chaos at Tartarus tips?

[Solo4114]

So, I've been playing Vulkan's Wrath lately. Made it past the first three missions and am on #4: Chaos at Tartarus.

I'm trying to complete the bonus objectives. So far, I've managed to obtain an Armageddon Pattern Basilisk and a Valkyrie gunship. Super. I gather the bonus reward for Chaos at Tartarus is a Baneblade or some such superheavy that I could sorely use.

Anyway, my core force has, up until this point, consisted of the following, with arrows pointing to what I upgrade them to.

- 2x Scouts --> 2x Imperial Marines
- 1x Assault Marines --> Vanguard Veteran Assault Marines
- 1x Command Squad
- 2x Devastator Marines with Heavy Bolters
- 2x Imperial Marines (just added them)
- 2x Terminators with Assault Cannons
- 2x Dreadnoughts --> Ironclad Dreadnoughts
- 3x Predator Annihilators. (basically, anti-armor Predators) --> 2x Land Raider Helios, 1x Land Raider Crusader
- 1x Predator Destructor. (basically anti-infantry Predator) --> 1x Land Raider Crusader
- 2x Landspeeder with missile launchers and Heavy Bolters --> 2x Assault Bike Squad
- 1x Vindicator assault gun. --> 1x Land Raider Achilles
- 1x Armageddon Pattern Basilisk artillery
- 1x Valkyrie gunship

I've also given all of my troops except for the Assault Marines a transport for this map only. My reason for doing this is the sense that I need to be in a lot of places at once, and need to be extremely mobile where possible. Catching and killing all the Ork warbosses seems to require mobility, so I like being able to travel a little farther if necessary. I try to offset this by minimizing individual losses, to keep reinforcement costs down, since I know they'll be expensive, and I try to use the transports sparingly so as not to have too many troops wiped out with the loss of a transport or two.


So, you start off with something like 5-6 deployment areas to choose from. One is in the northeast, and one in the south east. There's another further south and a little westward of there, near a line of two trenches that are quickly overwhelmed by Ork armor. North and a little west of there is another position on a ridge. A little further north and west (basically the middle of the map) is a deployment area near the Orks' main infantry body. The last one is in the north and center of the map, where you're near-ish to some cities and have another group of Orks with walkers.

I've tried several different deployments with varying levels of success. It's not that I don't think I can beat the mission. It's that I'm trying to get the bonus objective. My most recent deployment has been:

- 2x Imperial Marines + 1x Command Squad + 1x Devastator + 1x Assault Bike in the northeastern-most position. You get hit here by a group of Grot tanks and some Mega Armored Nobz (I hate those guys...).

- 1x Terminator + 1x Veteran Vanguard Assault + 1x Assault Bike + 1x Imperial Marine + 1x Devastator in the southeastern-most position. You have a warboss here, several grot launchers, and maybe 2-3 more infantry units, including those damn Mega Armored Nobz and some Slugga Boyz.

- Armageddon Pattern Artillery + Valkyrie Gunship + 1x Land Raider Helios on the central northern ridge area. I usually move the Helios south to the two lines of trenches, and the gunship and artillery north to deal with infantry.

- 2x Land Raider Crusader + 1x Ironclad Dreadnought at the center-most position to slow the Ork infantry wave.

- 1x Land Raider Helios + 1x Ironclad Dreadnought + 1x Imperial Marines + 1x Land Raider Achilles to deal with the Ork walkers.


The main problems I'm having are:

1. The eastern-most IG units can survive for a while, but I can lose a unit of conscripts if I can't stop the initial Grot-tanks-and-nobz assault.

2. The IG units positioned in the trenches end up overwhelmed and annihilated usually within 3-4. If I'm supposed to keep these guys alive, too...that ain't happening. My sense is that they're a lost cause, mostly just meant to be a speedbump for the orks.

3. My troops only seem able to take out around 2-3 individual ork units per turn. Because the orks seem to get unlimited reinforcements, there's no way to whittle them down, and there simply are too many damn orks for me to kill them all. Now, I've mostly just quit and restarted the scenario multiple times when one of the IG units in the east dies, but I'm also wondering how I'm gonna handle taking out the ork warbosses. I know where four of them are. I'm not sure if I'll have to hunt more of them in the west, and if so, how the hell I'm gonna do that when I can only seem to kill 2-3 units per turn.


So, thoughts? Suggestions? Should I position differently? Use a different force? I'm not thinking that my issue is in rate of fire, since pretty much all of my units have decent rates of fire. Or is the issue that my total troop numbers aren't large enough?

Lastly, which SPECIFIC IG units am I supposed to keep alive to complete the bonus objective? Does anyone know?